Innovation is driven by a commitment to thrive and leverage knowledge in new ways. As an industry leader, Jared Mabry reflects on how to question the norm, harness your assets, and provoke disruptive innovation.

Artificial intelligence is understandably a very hot topic in today's circles of innovation and business development given the potentially huge benefits; and research on how to make machines learn and think like humans is one of the biggest areas of interest in technology today. However the potential consequences of this increasingly rapid development in AI are not to be sniffed at so how is this being addressed?

In one of my recent blog posts I explored the idea of fostering creativity in the workplace and why there is still resistance to its implementation despite growing understanding and evidence of the importance of creative thinking to business success. The main reason it seems, is the reluctance of businesses to risk losing productivity - the measurable stuff of getting things done often linked to profits.

In this post I would like to look at how creativity and productivity can be managed to co-exist effectively, maximising the potential to propel innovation forward.

Why does collaboration matter? Because it plays a key role in innovation. However, many workplaces are still departmentally siloed, companies are geographically siloed and industries often siloed by different purposes and expertise. On stepping back from the situation it becomes apparent that there are more common goals than initially obvious, both within organisations and across industries. It requires leadership to recognise these goals, communicate them and inspire collaboration both internally and across industry in order to drive innovation.

The ability to harness creativity at work provides the capability for organisations to generate unique methods, intellectual property, and processes, ultimately providing them with a competitive advantage.

The issue this presents however is that traditionally, business and work environments are not conducive to enabling the ‘creative juices’ to flow, so to speak. They have up until recently, and still today in many cases, been about productivity and getting the job done. It is increasingly hard for many people grappling with growing to-do lists to even consider trying to do something differently, let alone actually doing it.